Findings
VIII. Health and Safety
Highlights:
- Family Health Network’s Article 28 dental clinic on Groton Avenue opened in May of 2005 filling a long identified need for dental services to low-income people. The clinic accepts public & private insurances and offers a sliding fee scale for uninsured and underinsured patients.
- Only 4.5% of Cortland County is served by fluoridated water, compared to 67.3% for the U.S. population. The Healthy People 2010 goal is 75%. Marathon is the only community with fluoridated water. Homer previously fluoridated its public water supply but in October 2005 voted to discontinue fluoridation.
- In 2002 Medicaid financed 44.5% of all births in Cortland County; 24.9% of all births in upstate NY and 38.4% for NYS births (Table HS-4).
- The 2002 teen pregnancy rate (33.8/1000 15-19 year olds) is the lowest ever and is lower than upstate NY, NYS or the US (Table HS-5 and Graph HS-3).
- Cortland has fewer low birth weight babies than upstate or NYS (Table HS-6).
- Diseases of the heart continue to be the leading cause of death in Cortland County, in NYS and the US (Table HS-8 and Graph HS-4).
- Rates of lung cancer in males, asthma and chronic lower respiratory disease is higher in Cortland than Upstate and NY State (Table HS-8 and HS-10).
- A survey of the NYSDOH Tobacco Control Program shows that Cortland has a higher rate of smokers compared to Central NY. The data in Table HS-32 disagree with that presented in Table HS-29 for 4 reasons: different survey, different year, different definition of smoker and the latter presents the combined and inseparable data from Cortland and Tompkins Counties.
- Children age 0-4 have a higher rate of hospitalizations from asthma than those in upstate NY but lower than NYS (Table HS-10).
- Tables HS-11 and HS-12 show Cortland’s low STD and AIDS rates.
- The incidence of all invasive cancers is lower than the upstate rate but the death rate is higher (Table HS-13).
- Violent crime is low and property crime is high (Table HS-16).
- Teen DWI arrests are high compared to Upstate and NYS (Table HS-19).
- Cortland County continues to have one of the highest rates of indicated reports of child abuse (Graph HS-6).
- Graph HS-20 shows the growth in the cumulative cases of all disabilities is fairly constant, except for autism cases, which have increased dramatically.
- The 2004 ZAP survey of 8th graders shows trends of risk behaviors: The percent of youth using alcohol and marijuana is decreasing, but the percent having intercourse is increasing (Table HS-25 and HS-27).
- Table HS-29 is an 8 county regional health assessment. Much of this data disagrees with other data in this report because it uses averages of multiple counties, different definitions and different time frames.
- Data confirms the opinion of various focus groups: The city of Cortland has a high number of bars and establishments with liquor licenses – 94! (Table HS- 33).